Group B – College of Liberal Arts NTTF Advisory Committee
Meeting Minutes
September 16, 2022
Present were: Jamie Switzer, Ellie Light, Frankie Wilcox, Sadie Kinney-McGrath, Daniela Castillo, Thomas Conway, Amanda Wright, and Luciana Marques
AGENDA:
- Committee Syllabus: Ellie Light
- Sub-Committee Charge
- Mentoring experiences: Tom Conway & Frankie Wilcox
- Equity Week (Oct. 24th-28th): Call for Volunteers
- Conversation around how to improve communications with CCAF
1. Committee Syllabus: Ellie Light
Ellie shared the syllabus concerning what we talked about in our first meeting, with a focus on communication, service and mentorship, and everything related to the subcommittee. She introduced open meetings for all CCAF, as a way to gather input from CCAF who attend, about mentorship. Are there policies we need to convey? How to communicate issues that arise in departments.
Question from Sadie: Do we need to switch to Zoom if there are a lot of people?
Amanda: Is 284 CCAF just in CLA? Yes
2. Sub-Committee Charge
Sub-Committee charge is mentoring
3. Mentoring experiences
Frankie Wilcox talked about the mentoring committee meeting and questions about assessing the needs in her department. A question for those who have already been promoted: Would you be willing to serve as a mentor? Frankie created a document for her department with answers for people going up for promotion. Tom Conway described the experience of the English department, which first began a mentoring program in 2012. He described the need for adjustments, research in best practices for first-year mentoring. In the past, there were, there were only guidelines for promotion provided to tenure track faculty. Since Fall 2021 when CCA faculty gained a path to promotion and mentoring in English focusing on promotion as a result. Tom described the pod approach, in which faculty cohorts share information with each other, offer advice, raise issues, etc. He said that mentorship should not be hierarchical, but more collaborative in nature, and should be separated from evaluation. One issue with asking people to serve as mentors is that it involves asking people to take on too much service, and certain people, especially women and BIPOC faculty are already overburdened.
4. Equity Week (Oct. 24th-28th)
Frankie introduced Equity Week, which will include panels raising awareness and providing information and pointing out inequities. Ellie recommended that individuals on this committee volunteer to organize something for Equity Week. Amanda, Eli, and Dani volunteered to be the Equity Week group. Last year this committee planned a listening session at Avo’s. Amanda suggested that we bring in a speaker, similar to Adrianna Kezar, who came to campus last year, and Eli agreed this would be a good idea. Tom shared Kezar’s website, which has useful information about her research on approaches to Non-Tenure Track Faculty at different universities. There is some concern that there is not enough time to bring in a speaker, though there are also Zoom options if we want a speaker. Another possibility is something more informal.
5. CCAF Communications
We then had a very brief conversation about how to improve communications with CCAF. Ellie pointed out that a lot of departments don’t have representation on the committee. Amanda asked if we should reach out to CCAF from departments who don’t have representation. Ellie: Right now, we only have a general listserv for all CCAF.